


Lightkeeper

by nixy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 07:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9645446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nixy/pseuds/nixy
Summary: It's been decades, but once a month someone still has to tend the light at Hogwarts and Ginny isn't going to give it up yet.





	

Ginny's bones always ache by the time she's climbed to the ruined top of the Astronomy Tower, but at least with the apparition wards down she doesn't have to risk the lowest levels. She comes when the sun and moon are both in the sky and the grounds are as quiet as they ever are. The little extra risk from pausing to look down and remember is worth it.

She douses the massive fire and cleans out the pit it rests in before pulling log after log from the old beaded bag she never lets go. With an incantation that's reflex by now she lights the spelled wood and steps back. It'll burn until the next month, warning all who see it to turn and flee. Someone else will take over the duty soon, but she's determined to keep going until she can't do it.

She sits on the parapet and listens to voices long gone. The memories haunt her up here with the wind and sun, the eve of the final battle and all the years before. They're mostly good mixed with moments of terror and tragedy, but the end - the end is almost too much to remember now. That last night Harry had to stay to finish the prophecy, Hermione had to stay to finish the Death Eaters, and the volunteers stayed to keep them alive long enough to finish their final duties. They didn't say they wouldn't be following.

In the end Pansy stunned her so that Hermione wouldn't have to and sent her with Hannah & Parvati. She didn't wake until they crossed the lines around the station and by then it was too late to go back. Even now she wonders why at the end Narcissa didn't do the same to Draco, but perhaps she thought he'd earned the right to his redemption. Not many of the volunteers were allowed to stay and a shockingly high number of them were Slytherins. Historians debate whether Harry & Hermione were letting them make a statement, paid no attention to house, or in a minority view wanted to cut the number of Slytherin survivors. Only a few teachers could stay since they were needed to protect the students, but Flitwick and Snape did to help Hermione.

No-one really knows what they did at the end after Neville killed Nagini and Harry fought Voldemort. The last Death Eater deserter to escape saw Harry get back up from a Killing Curse and restart the duel just before he apparated away. Soon after that the earth shook and the evacuees saw darkness fall from the night air until the Hogwarts grounds and part of the Forbidden forest were simply gone. No more of Voldemort's servants came to test their defenses. Near dawn they decided that the last stand at the castle must have won. When the sun came up they saw a weary, worn landscape and a castle far older than the one they'd left in the night. The faintest shadows moved across the grass & stone and amongst the ancient trees, more ripples in the light than shade.

It was a Hufflepuff who dared the line between normal and vast age first, determined to go back and find the friends they'd left behind. One moment she was fine - tired and scared, but fine - and the next she wore away somehow and faded from view. Every test they could think of had the same result and the faculty forbade anyone else from entering. The expert consensus was that Hermione and her collaborators had sped time up so far that millennia passed in that first night and the effect was only slowly fading. It didn't explain the half-glimpsed things that moved through the air or why they were quieter at certain times, but it made more sense than anything.

Still, overly brave or outright foolish types kept trying in the months afterward and eventually one found most of the Tower was outside the grip of the magic. It was safest to apparate partway up and climb the rest, the top was windy enough to be risky. Ginny claimed the right to keep the memorial & warning light and no-one challenged her. Her best friend, her first love, and her brother all died leading the resistance and everyone knew she would have died with them.

The fire is renewed, the sun sinking in the sky, and her duty done for another month she stands and looks around her one last time. Her wife, daughters, and grandchildren are waiting at home for her and she knows Hermione wouldn't begrudge her finding love again.


End file.
